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    • Recalling Kyle Kempt, Iowa State football upset of Oklahoma
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    Recalling Kyle Kempt, Iowa State football upset of Oklahoma

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    EDITOR’S NOTE: Months of research led to a series, “Year of the Quarterback,” being presented in three waves. The first wave — 10 articles covering the volatile new world of the transfer portal — was published recently. This is the sixth story in the second wave, which tracks then-and-now journeys of 10 Stark County quarterbacks.

    Quarterback Kyle Kempt made second-team All-Ohio as a 2012 Massillon Tigers senior, certainly a nice honor, but surely not what it used to be.

    In 1959, the Associated Press All-Ohio football team honored a first-team QB, Massillon’s Joe Sparma; a second-teamer, Frank Christie of Marietta, and a third-teamer, Dick Craft of Greenfield McClain. Other than some honorable mention guys, that was it.

    Flash forward to 2012. The AP first team alone included Mentor’s Mitch Trubisky, Hoover’s Dom Iero and 19 other quarterbacks in six divisions. There was Kempt, on the second team, a bit lost in a crowd.

    Then he went to college and really got lost.

    He resurfaced, against all odds, looking like a first-team All-American the day he beat Baker Mayfield.

    Everybody in Tigertown knew Joe Sparma. He was born there. He was 10-0 as a senior. His dad became a Massillon mayor.

    Sparma was the No. 1 quarterback on Ohio State’s unbeaten 1962 team. In 1968, the whole town puffed its chest when he pitched the Detroit Tigers to the win over the Yankees that clinched the American League pennant.

    Kempt was a move-in from Oregon who moved back to play at Oregon State.

    Corvallis, home of the Beavers, isn’t Columbus. There have been a “moments,” such as Derek Anderson outgunning Notre Dame’s Brady Quinn in a 2004 bowl game, but Oregon State boasts just four top-20 finishes in the last 50 years.

    Kempt was a Massillon senior when the Beavers opened with wins against top 20 teams Wisconsin and UCLA.

    The next year, Sean Mannion ranked second in the nation in passing yards behind Derek Carr. Buoyed by his Massillon run, Kempt watched Mannion with high hopes. In retrospect, he concedes, he was “very naive.”

    “It was a six-hour flight from home,” Kempt told the Repository recently. “It truly was a race to maturity.

    “High school guys don’t realize what it takes to be ready to play a game, the amount of work it takes to be good, the amount of work it takes to be great at that level. It’s extreme.

    “I should have handled it in a much different way. I walked in thinking, ‘I’m going to be a good player. This is my plan.’ I kept thinking about the result, the result, the result, and not the process to get to that result.

    “I didn’t learn that until I got to Iowa State.”

    Recalling his formative years, Kempt said, “We moved around a lot.” He was a sophomore when he landed at Massillon in 2010.

    Kyle’s dad, Mychal, was a college linebacker at Montana State who guided him into football while climbing the corporate ladder. The family relocated from Seattle to Honolulu to San Francisco and to Beaverton, Oregon.

    The next stop was Diebold headquarters in Green, Ohio. The Kempts moved to Stark County’s Jackson Township and sent Kyle to Massillon via open enrollment.

    Massillon has become known for transfer quarterbacks, including Brent Offenbecher (Sebring) and Brian DeWitz (Orrville) in the Mike Currence era, Justin Zwick (Orrville) when Rick Shepas was head coach, and DaOne Owens (Copley) in a one-year cameo ending with a 2023 state championship.

    Kempt was different because he came from so far away.

    He began his first Massillon season behind 6-foot sophomore Brody Tonn, but word was out that Kempt was a hot prospect. At 6-foot-5, he wasn’t hard to spot.

    In Game 2, GlenOak’s Brionte Dunn ran for an astonishing 320 yards, but Tonn passed for 330 in a 28-27 Tiger win.

    In Game 3, head coach Jason Hall benched Tonn after three series, even though the Tigers had a 14-0 lead over Stow. Why? As Hall put it to the Massillon Independent, “It was time to see what Kyle could do.”

    Kempt phased in as the primary 2010 starter. He was the starter in 2011 and 2012. The town, the team and the coaching staff debated whether the scrappy local, Tonn, should have been given more of a chance at QB, rather than changing positions.

    Everyone agreed Kempt had an arm.

    Hall’s 2009 Tigers fell 31-17 in the Division I state semifinals to a Cleveland Glenville team quarterbacked by Cardale Jones.

    Hall went into 2010 needing to replace his own standout QB, Robert Partridge, who passed for 22 touchdowns in ’09 and headed for Miami (Ohio).

    The 2010 Tigers got 1,130 receiving yards from Ohio State recruit Devin Smith. Kempt threw for 1,643 yards (to Tonn’s 720) on a team that peaked at 6-1 and wound up 7-4.

    In 2011, the Tigers got to 7-1 before losses to Steubenville and McKinley kiboshed playoff hopes.

    Ohio State recruit Gareon Conley had a big receiving year in 2012 (1,096 yards, 21.9 per catch, 16 touchdowns). Kempt came of age, throwing for 3,056 yards.

    The lone regular-season loss was to GlenOak. Beating McKinley in the regular season and the playoffs was a huge relief after losses to the arch-rival in 2010 and 2011.

    Tonn had a senior’s day in the sun in the first win over McKinley, catching a long touchdown pass from Kempt, throwing a TD pass on a fake field goal, and making an interception.

    In Round 2 of the playoffs, Kempt hit McKinley with three TD passes for an offense averaging 43 points a game.

    The fun was done. Toledo Whitmer tamed the Tigers in the third round, 49-16.

    Kempt left as Massillon’s all-time leader with 6,034 career passing yards.

    The scouting report was along these lines: Tall, strong-armed, accurate pocket passer … competitive … too deliberate, leading to sacks … suited to be a Mid-American Conference starter.

    He considered Mississippi, West Virginia, Oregon State and Bowling Green.

    He liked Toledo’s offensive coordinator and soon-to-be head coach, Matt Campbell, but committed to Cincinnati, only to switch to Oregon State when Bearcats head coach Butch Jones jumped to Tennessee.

    Kempt liked Oregon State offensive coordinator, Danny Langsdorf. After he sat as a freshman, Langsdorf left to be Eli Manning’s position coach with the New York Giants. After Kempt’s sophomore year, head coach Mike Riley relocated to Nebraska.

    Having not played a down in two years, feeling no warmth from new head coach Gary Andersen, Kempt left for a community college in Hutchinson, Kansas, a place he could play rather than having to sit out a year with a new FBS team, per the NCAA’s pre-transfer portal rules.

    But he didn’t play. He spent the season behind Kylen Binn and Dimonek McKenzie, QBs who took the team to an 11-1 record but soon dropped off the football radar.

    Kempt turned to Campbell, a rising coach who had been a Mount Union teammate of his Massillon coach, Hall.

    Campbell went 35-15 at Toledo before taking over a reeling Iowa State program in 2016.

    In 2012, Campbell had recruited Kempt. In 2017, as Kempt put it, he recruited Campbell.

    The best Kempt could do was an invitation to walk on and live with paying out-of-state tuition.

    Kempt grew on Campbell, winning 2016 “scout team player of the year” honors. In practice before a loss to Oklahoma, he pretended to be Baker Mayfield.

    He got in a 2016 game, making two throws at the end of a blowout of San Jose State.

    Four years removed from Massillon, his career college totals were two passes, two completions, 15 yards.

    There was zero chance he would beat out incumbent Iowa State starter Jacob Park in 2017.

    The Cyclones went 3-9 in 2016, but Park stood out in a 66-10 rout of Texas Tech, whose quarterback, Patrick Mahomes, was in his next-to-last college game (Kempt was Mahomes in practice).

    Park had behind-the-scenes issues. He had become a father shortly before the 2017 season. After four games, he took a leave of absence and never came back.

    The first game after Park’s departure was against Oklahoma, ranked No. 3 and led by eventual Heisman Trophy winner Mayfield.

    “All the odds were against us,” Kempt said. “Our starting quarterback was done. We were coming off a tough loss to Texas. Everybody was looking at each other like, man, is this going to be another 3-9 year?

    “I give credit to Coach Campbell and the senior leadership for drawing a line in the sand, saying enough is enough.

    “We were going to walk into Oklahoma’s stadium and play our style of football.

    “As daunting as the situation seemed, everyone on the plane had a clear mind and a belief.”

    Oklahoma ended 2016 on a 10-game win streak and was 4-0 in 2017.

    When Mayfield threw three early touchdown passes, the Sooners seemed on their way to covering the 31-point spread.

    The Cyclones got serious in the second half. Kempt’s TD passes of 28, 57 and 25 yards led to a 38-31 Cyclones win.

    “It’s embarrassing,” Mayfield said afterward. “No matter who it is, you don’t lose on your home field.”

    It was four weeks after Mayfield planted the Oklahoma flag at midfield after a win at Ohio State. In turn, cornerback Evrett Edwards planted the Iowa State flag on Mayfield’s home turf.

    Kempt dazzled. He led a late 94-yard touchdown drive. He completed 18 of 24 passes for 343 yards.

    “It says a lot about who he is,” Campbell said. “He has great poise. He stands for what you want your football team to stand for.”

    Kempt has followed Mayfield in a pro career that has wound from Cleveland to Tampa Bay.

    “Say what you want about him, the dude’s a competitor,” Kempt said. “He’s accurate. He has a great arm. He extends plays with his feet. He has that fire. The guys on Oklahoma’s team loved him.”

    Mayfield entered the Iowa State game with 10,000-plus collegiate passing yards. Kempt came in cold.

    “It took five years to get my first start,” he said. “That was difficult, coming from Massillon and having a lot of success, feeling a ton of expectation to make the city of Massillon proud … to reach my own expectations.

    “Just being able to walk on the field that day and play football, I was very grateful. It really changed my life.

    “It pivoted me from the path I was going down and probably being out of football.”

    Kempt went 5-3 as the 2017 starter. In 2018, for the first time since 2012 at Massillon, he was an opening-day starter … Iowa State at Iowa.

    A throng of 70,000 packed Kinnick Stadium. Kempt had the Cyclones in it, completing 16 of 21 passes through the early part of the third quarter. He took some hits, though. He left with a sprained knee after absorbing a fourth sack.

    Zeb Noland finished up and played the next three games, beating Akron but losing to Oklahoma and TCU.

    In the next game, against Oklahoma State, Noland was benched. The replacement, freshman Brock Purdy, was an instant hit.

    Kempt healed but appeared only briefly in three more games.

    “Getting hurt was devastating,” he said. “You come back working toward a super senior season. You’re a captain. All those expectations. Then the rug is pulled from underneath you.

    “It was a great lesson in the realities of life. Our hopes and dreams are never promised. You have to be ready for what happens each and every day.”

    Kempt’s acceptance of Purdy scored points with Campbell, who invited him onto the coaching staff in 2019. Kempt is in his sixth season on the staff.

    “I don’t know if anybody is more fit to coach than what Kyle is,” Campbell said when he hired Kempt. “It’s the greatest, most powerful story we have to tell — what he has done as the captain of our football team and the courage he has shown to empower those around him and make those around him better.”

    Purdy has a 23-8 record in the NFL and has played in a Super Bowl with the 49ers.

    “Even when Brock first arrived at Iowa State, you could tell he was different,” Kempt said.

    Iowa State has managed to stay relevant amidst the transfer portal, name-image-likeness market, and the evolution of mega-conferences. The 2024 Cyclones are 4-0 and ranked No. 16 heading into a home game against Baylor on Saturday.

    “The greatest thing (Campbell) does here is getting the guys to play hard,” Kempt said. “That’s so important in this sport.

    “We may not have the most talent, but we’re going to line up and play the absolute hardest for 60 minutes of anybody in the conference.”

    The “Mayfield game” wasn’t Kempt’s only 2017 moment. He went 3-1 against top-20 teams, including the Oklahoma stunner, a 49-42 loss to No. 12 Oklahoma State, a 14-7 win over No. 4 TCU, and a 21-20 conquest of No. 19 Memphis.

    “It took a lot longer than I thought it would to get there,” Kempt said. “It was a journey I had to go on myself, to figure it out and go through hardships.

    “Even when I was at Oregon State, there were older guys who were a big help. The process helped me become the older guy who helped provide that structure for Brock.

    “I use it to relate to the guys I have now. I feel like I was meant to be on that journey.”

    Kyle’s dad continues his own travels. Mychal Kempt left Ohio in 2016 to become CEO of Bancsource in Springfield, Missouri. Late in 2021, he became a top executive for Cennox, near Atlanta.

    Kyle Kempt has nice things to say about Massillon.

    “It was incredible that they won the state championship,” he said of the 2023 Tigers. “I’m very happy for team and for the coach.

    “It goes to show how powerful the Massillon community is. People can stop saying we haven’t won a state playoff title.”

    Reach Steve at [email protected]

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